Google Settles Book-Scanning Lawsuit

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Google settled a seven-year lawsuit by the Association of American Publishers over its Google Library Project, but still faces a class-action lawsuit by a guild of book authors.

The settled suit ended a copyright infringement case that alleged Google violated publishers' copyrighted books by scanning them into its Google Library Project, as well as showing snippets of them on its search engine, according to the Wall Street Journal. The settlement allows Google to continue to scan library books but that publishers can remove the titles from the project if they wish.

Unfortunately for Google, the Authors Guild is still pursuing a lawsuit against the tech titan and its scanning project. The group is seeking $750 in damages for each alleged copyright violation -- which could be upwards of $750 million.

Google had little to say, but managed an upbeat comment. “By putting this litigation with the publishers behind us, we can stay focused on our core mission and work to increase the number of books available to educate, excite and entertain our users via Google Play," David Drummond, a Google senior vice president, said in a statement to Wired.

While some say this is about fair-use, it's pretty difficult to argue that having entire books online is an example of fair-use. However, shouldn't Google's library project have the same protection as a public library? Unfortunately our laws haven't caught up to the digital age and few judges have the technological know-how to preside over many tech cases. Let's hope that changes soon.